in THE ELEPHANT 69 



An Englishman cannot show his face among those people at 

 the present day. The myth has been exploded. The golden 

 image has been scratched, and the potter's clay beneath has been 

 revealed. This is a terrible result of clumsy management. We 

 have failed in every way. Broken faith has dissipated our char- 

 acter for sincerity, and our military operations have failed to 

 attain their object, resulting in retreat upon every side, to be 

 followed up even to the sea -shores of the Red Sea by an enemy 

 that is within range of our gun-vessels at Souakim. This is a 

 distressing change to those who have received much kindness and 

 passed most agreeable days among the Arab tribes of the Soudan 

 deserts, and I look back with intense regret to the errors we have 

 committed, by which the entire confidence has been destroyed 

 which formerly was associated with the English name. The 

 countries which we opened by many years of hard work and 

 patient toil throughout the Soudan, even through the extreme 

 course of the White Nile to its birthplace in the equatorial regions, 

 have been abandoned by the despotic order of the British Govern- 

 ment, influenced by panic instead of policy ; telegraphic lines which 

 had been established in the hitherto barbarous countries of 

 Kordofan, Darfur, the Blue Nile territories of Senaar, and through- 

 out the wildest deserts of Nubia to Khartoum, have all been 

 abandoned to the rebels, who under proper management should 

 have become England's friends. 



This has been our civilising influence (?), by which we have 

 broken down the work of half a century, and produced the most 

 complete anarchy where five and twenty years ago a lady could 

 travel in security. England entered Egypt in arms to re-estaUish 

 the authority of the Khedive \ We have dislocated his Empire, 

 and forsaken the Soudan. 



